At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached...
A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him i...
Maybe dream chasing is like climbing a mountain. You know, finding the trail, stepping onto it. At first you're energetic and it's easy. Then you trip over a root, face a huge boulder, or a steep incline. So you stand up after the fall, find your way...
Because most of the girls were still in mourning and all of them had lost their textbooks, even pencils and pens, Shaukat Ali began the first classes by reading to them from poetry and religious texts. "Reading, literature, and spirituality are good ...
I've seen the way you've been looking at me. Don't bullshit me, Pat. I live in the addition around back, which is completely separate from the house, so there's no chance of my parents walking in on us. I hate the fact that you wore a football jersey...
If you never have sex you never gain a sense of power. You never gain a voice or an identity of your own. Sex is the act that separates us from our parents. Children from adults. It's by having sex that adolescents first rebel. And if you never have ...
All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause. The strength of a belief, w...
if you hurt deeply, then it means you love deeply too. love is powerful thing, Jaron. In the end, love will help you win this war." I chuckled, "that'd be a fine new strategy, I think. When the enemy wields a sword against me, I'll simply express my ...
It took Pueblo a few seconds to take in his surroundings. The first thing he realised was that he felt bruised all over; the second was that his clothes were waterlogged, even more than before, from the quicksand; and the third, was that he had lande...
I've never really had any luck with women in my life. Well, at first I was fairly lucky. Then all of a sudden, they all thought they had to get married for some reason. And not to me. It's especially strange, because I almost always fell in love with...
This is the first time I have heard ‘ethics’ in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship that know its meaning. At one time in my life, I dreamed that I might someday talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myse...
For the first time X the truth is, I also couldn't bear to share you. I couldn't watch that happening,watch you with another man.I have gone too deep.Too deep with you. He kisses me again I love you, I love you more than I have ever loved any woman i...
Life isn't a lazy cruise on some endless, calm, and temperate sea. Life is a raging ocean with swells and tidal waves that wreck and sink your boat. Life is a series of storms―overcast skies, fierce winds, and pelting rain. You were meant to be imm...
He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each haloed light-in a tower or strung along the...
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our chi...
At first, when a child meets something that scares him, the fear grows, like a wave. But when he goes into the water and swims - gets used to the water - the wave grows small. If we pull the child away when the wave is high, he never sees that, never...
It is necessary to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound (whether or not that power is institutionalized). It is necessary to remember that it is first the potent...
Little sister!" Apollo called. If his teeth were any whiter he could've blinded us without the sun car. "What's up? You never call. You never write. I was getting worried!" Artemis sighed. "I'm fine, Apollo. And I am not your sister." "Hey, I was bor...
What was it Danilov told me before I left? Something about how one day I would stand at a crossroads where I could choose the Light, which illuminated the sky with its warmth and golden glow - or the Darkness, which at first seemed soothing and invit...
He noticed that she threw away the crumbled bus ticket on the street as soon as she got down. He picked it up and put it in his pocket along with his own a memorabilia of their first date together, just like a strand of her hair he would find later o...
Then there were the shabti, magical figurines that were supposed to come to life when summoned. A few months ago, I’d fallen for a girl named Zia Rashid, who’d turned out to be a shabti. Falling in love for the first time had been hard enough. Bu...